8-8-88 and 8-9-10

This morning I was looking over posts on Facebook.  One post caught my eye, 8-9-10, today's date.  John and I had just mentioned yesterday's date, 8-8, and we talked about our stone fireplace.  When we built our house in 1988, July and August were largely spent selecting and placing stones in the chimney.   One large stone on the end was placed the day my maternal grandfather, Maxie Wheeler died.  We formally capped off the top of the chimney outside with the date inscribed and a bright, shiny, new 1988 copper penny, on August 8, 1988, 8-8-88, the day it was finished.  Was just too much of a special date to let it go unnoticed.

Please note, our stone fireplace is the centerpiece and anchor for our home.  Massive 14 ft wide, walk around with big stones, some collected from far away parts of the world (I have picked up rocks and brought them home from all over the world, much to John's distress) and sprinkled them in, all the way to the ceiling, it is beautiful. Most of the stones are from the Linville River, in the mountains of NC.  Those stones had the color and texture we wanted, but there is also a ballast stone from the Pamunkey River in Virginia, a "fools gold" stone my girls found at a cow show in South Carolina, a rock from the Tower of London, a stone from a beach in northern France, and many more.  All with a story.

Recently, we were flipping channels one night and happened upon an old tv show, Bonanza, a staple in all homes when we were growing up.  Hoss, Adam, and Little Joe, were talking to their daddy, Ben, in front of their fireplace.  Quess what, it looked a lot like ours.  Maybe watching the Cartwright family when we were growing up marked us both and made us yearn for that big stone fireplace.  Who knows?

We also put a time capsule, a large Cool Whip bowl filled with small tokens of that time, a newspaper, and a letter about our family, in front of the firebox under a brown stone that has a fossil imprint.  It was a stone we found in Canada's Bay of Fundy, many years ago on a wonderful camping trip with our dear friends, Kay and Bill.  The Bay of Fundy has the greatest tide change of any place in the world due to the unique shape of the bay.  And there are warning signs all about cautioning visitors to be aware of the extreme tides.  They can range up to 48 feet, so it is necessary to pay attention and not get caught during a rising tide with no place to retreat.

Amazing how a date, or that one little stone can pull up so many wonderful memories, but it did.  Life is like that.  You see or hear or smell something and a flood of memories come to you.  Of course, we hope they are good memories, and it depends on the life we have had for that part.  But that little brown stone sure brings back a host of good times to me.

Guess I've always had rocks in my wagon.

PCQ